The GEN, in collaboration with Google News Lab and Code for Africa, brought together media innovators in South Africa for the two-day hackathon that was designed to find solutions for the future of news around the issue of 'misinformation, the war on truth'. 

In less than 48 hours, EWN built a messaging-focused, machine learning artificial intelligence (AI) that can detect mis- and disinformation on ‘dark social’, which includes private messaging platforms like Whatsapp and Facebook Messenger, and flags it before it gets passed on.

The EWN team, including Camilla Bath, Bruce Thwaits, and Cameron Moodley, prototyped a Chrome extension that allows users to check in real time whether any message they are about to forward on is fake news. Their prototype is called Ukweli, which is Swahili for ‘truth’, and the team aim to turn the prototype into a real platform.

"Think of it as antivirus software for your chat groups," says Bath. "We plan to make a start with our own base of hoax messages, gleaned from our 16 000 active, strong WhatsApp community, plus our other social media platforms, to train the AI and to continually build up the repository of misinformation." 

"The fact that a lot of misinformation comes from dark social networks that aren't really monitored means that there's a real need to go into those networks," adds jury members Chris Orwa and Eric Mugendi. "The tool is really useful because it compels you, as an individual, and gives you the tools to stop the spread of misinformation." 

EWN’s editor in chief, Katy Katopodis, says, "This is extremely exciting for EWN as it positions us globally in the fight against fake news. The truth always needs to be louder than the lies and the misinformation. This tool will empower audiences to take up the 'truth' mantle and check and double check stories and messages before forwarding them."

"A project like this shows our deep commitment as a newsroom to rooting out fake news. This is a worthy acknowledgement of our world-class technical and digital innovators, who are continuously striving to help audiences to make sense of the news, in interesting ways," concludes Katopodis. 

The EWN team will be heading to the 'World Cup' of news innovation at the Global Editors Network summit in Lisbon in May 2018.

For more information, visit www.ewn.co.za. Alternatively, connect with them on Facebook, Twitter or on Instagram.